Doom3world

Hi,
First of all, excuse I know this is not the place where I should place this post but anyways..

I'd like to make an Indie game, on a good engine.
I've got a team of modellers, animators, and now we're looking for a good engine to start some game progress. But we're looking to a good engine. Most of us are saying Source, but I know Source engine doesnt support all the texture maps like Doom 3 does, so it won't look that good.
I'd also say ID Tech 4 after the code gets released next month, I think the modding community could make something with the outdoor and the max polycount on screen problems.
I'd also say UDK, but there's a real problem to get members to help us.
So I'm trying to ask people's oppinon. What do you think is the best engine to use. We want smooth gameplay, lots of monsters, and things like that.

Here are a few shots:

The Doom 1 Lost Soul Remake http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1296/lostsouldone.jpg
The Doom 1 Pinky Remake http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/7067/pinkywip.png
And a monster based on an Recall to Hell Concept
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/7232/geneticdronemodelwip.jpg
http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/8020/geneticdroneconceptart.jpg

So what's your opinion?

You wanna make an indie game with other peoples monster designs?

Anyway, its hard to give any advice about what engine you should pick, when we know nothing about what game you're making. You should pick an engine that supports what you want to among other stuff.

Also I havent heard it should be hard to find members for UDK, lots of people are using it. But maybe I heard wrong.

What are you aiming for?
Something graphically awesome? Don't select source. Actually. Don't go this route, you're 95% certain of failure.
Something that has the potential to become really popular? Don't select Idtech4.
Something with decent outdoor areas? Don't select Idtech4
Something that's easy to recruit for? Don't select Idtech4

Oh and it's a really bad idea to use other franchises in an indie project.

Well, since all your models are revolving around id related material I say go with idTech 4 but the key questions to ask yourself here are;

What engine best suits myself and my teams needs?
Where do you and your team's talents lie, have you modded UDK, Source or idTech 4 before?

I didn't see "programmer" on your list. This is kind of important.

If no one has any solid programming knowledge or you can't get a serious programmer to seriously commit, I'd say definitely don't go with id tech 4. (The cynic would say, don't go ahead with the project, but lets forget about that.) Pick something where game dynamics are script dependent and not too code dependent, like Unity or UDK.

You need to think about licensing. I'm not sure source is all that favorable in terms of licensing indie games unless valve coops you ala team fortress. UDK has reasonable licensing terms especially if your game doesn't break a certain revenue threshold.

I second that id tech 4 is too obscure. If you want something that will be easy to recruit for, pick UDK. It also has way more streamlined editing tools and documentation which are a huge deal. UDK is definitely the "it just works out of the box" option.

Of course if you do go tech 4 you can pocket all the revenue, but I still think the plusses of UDK outweigh this.

Believe me, you don't want to be going the crysis route. Indy games just don't have the money and manpower to pull it off, with a few notable exceptions. Think about it this way, for a game that looks double as good, your going to be putting in 4 times the effort making normal/specular maps and baking high res textures and whatever. Its really not worth it.

Lastly I seriously hope your not trying to use any intellectual property like monsters from any other game in a commercial title. This is really a no brainer. Even with stand alone mods this is kind of iffy.